[cups.general] OT: PDF versions (was: Problem printing pdf document)

[Ambrose Li]

On 08/09/06, Johannes Meixner <jsmeix at suse.de> wrote:
> Obviously when new features are added to a data-format specification,
> old-stlye applications which do not support the new features may
> no longer be able to process the data-format correctly.
>
>
> What would you tell a user who reports a problem with a particular PDF?
> Would you tell him what you wrote, which means that it is hopeless?
> Or wouldn't it be better to tell him about some best effort attempts
> which may help him to solve/avoid/get-rid-of his problem?

Of course any user (i.e., me) will assume he/she did something wrong
and try to fix the problems first. That's why I mentioned the testing
I did.

I kept generating the lowest-versioned (and I believe lowest-featured
possible) PDF's for a long time.  Until someone complained that my
PDF's could not be read at all in his NEW reader. I did the testing
and confirmed that old-versioned ("low-featured") PDF's can indeed
cause (Chinese-related) problems in new readers. So what do you do?
Generate newer-versioned PDF's to try to get rid of the problems? What
else can you do?

But what if later you find out that despite your best efforts no
version of PDF can get rid of all the problems?

In a very real sense you have no choice than to say "it's hopeless".
At least for people who use Chinese; I find that, often, if I delete
the Chinese and re-generate the PDF with the same software, the
problem disappears.

Or use proprietary software like Adobe's generators, which I
reluctantly find to cause far less problems. Don't you think this is
not good news?
-- 
cheers,
-ambrose